Taking One For The Team
by vacant houses
Summary: Oneshot. Crack. In which the turtles are captured and stuck in a cell, Leonardo attempts to stage an intervention, Raphael has a serious problem, Donatello and Michelangelo try to challenge the status quo and Karai takes the tiniest steps in moving beyond her usual game plan. Unfortunately, reality has other ideas.


TMNT= Not Mine

It takes me several days to write a 2000 words essay and yet a crackfic takes me an hour. Something is wrong with me.  
So, I've been reading some of my old favorite stories and noticed some common themes. I don't actually mind them, well, when they're done right. It's just they kept reoccurring. And when I notice things...well, that's when I write crack.

Also. I've finally finished the second chapter of Fallout and now I'm waiting for it to betaed. Yay. It's only a year late. *sigh*

Lots of swearing in this one. Meh. And like, loads of mention of torture. All in the most lighthearted possible way.

* * *

"This," Michelangelo sulked, "Is all your fault, Raph."

Raphael stretched himself out to his full length on the cell floor and gave his brother a sullen look. "It's not like I _asked_ you guys to come with me. This one is all on Leo."

Donatello and Leonardo had to scrunch up together to make space for him. Leonardo was not amused to have the blame and Michelangelo's Death Glare shifted onto him. "Oh come on," he scoffed, "You can't be trusted to go _anywhere_ by yourself."

"I was going for a newspaper run! I literally could have taken _any_ path to get to _any _place in New York that sells newspapers. It's like that stuff Don talks about, infinite possibilities or some shit-"

"Technically, there are a set number of paths you could have used-" Donatello spoke up but wilted under Raph's glare. "Okay, but the possibility of the Foot knowing which one you were going to take is very low. Like, near improbable."

"_Infinite possibilities_," Raphael growled firmly. "Any one of them, I could have taken. The Foot had no way of predicting which one I would have picked and neither could you. It should have been safe! It should have been a one turtle job. SERIOUSLY."

Leonardo gave his brother a pitying look. It was one that said, I-have-travelled-around-the-world-and-trained-with-NINJITSU MASTERS. I-understand-the-way-the-world-works. You-do-not. Stop-embarrassing-yourself.

"Look Raph," he said, "The statistics speak for themselves. 250.00% of the time you head up to the surface, you get into trouble that we inevitably have to pull your shell out of. It makes no difference if you're looking for it or not, it happens. Pizza runs, visiting April or Casey, just going for a breath of air. ANYTHING. Clearly, the surface just isn't for you. It throws the laws of probabilities upside down and sneers at your infinite possibilities. If I didn't know better, I would say you were arranging your own kidnappings and beatings to near death."

Raphael gaped dumbly at his brother. "You-"

"The thing is, we know you that you love us far too much to put us through the trauma that we always go through when this happens. That's the only reason I haven't called for an intervention," Leonardo sighed.

"This," Raphael said after a moment's pause, "Is the most ridiculous shit I have ever heard."

"I've gotta say bro," Michelangelo piped up, "The evidence does speak for itself. This cell has your name on it."

"Well, that's just-" Raph tried to think up a reasonable defence. There wasn't one. "I come here a lot?" he finished weakly.

"Yes Raph," Leo said in a patronizing tone. "That's exactly why we think you're capable of walking around topside by yourself."

"Well, it ain't like you guys helped a lot by coming along," Raph spat angrily, "Now all of us are trapped here. Escaping is going to be a bitch."

"We thought it was a pre-emptive measure," Donatello mumbled, "If we managed to stop it once, you would be able to see that there were alternatives outcomes to the kidnapping attempts."

"Oh for fuck's sake," Raphael groaned with horror, "This _is_ an intervention."

Michelangelo shifted slightly, trying to make himself more comfortable. His feet accidentally nudged his most volatile brother who narrowed his eyes to slits at him. "Give us some credit, we would definitely do it somewhere that has a better interior decorator," he scoffed before admitting, "Okay, look, it _was_ a very proactive intervention that got fucked up. Now, can you please move your ginormous butt so some of us can have some space?"

"This is my cell, dickwad," Raphael retorted. "Go get your own." He shifted his attention to his other brothers. "Look, I don't see why you seem to think I specifically have a problem. Leo is always getting captured every second Tuesday and Friday and he always comes back brainwashed. It's like he's fucking Wolverine or something and Mikey, I will stab you to death if you make a comment on that. And you guys do it once every blue moon."

His brothers paused and shot each other uncertain glances. Raphael scowled at them, chew on that, assholes!

"Okay," Donatello conceded, "We'll give you that. But you've got to admit Raph, the moment you go topside by yourself, trouble _always _happen. NO MATTER WHAT. It breaks every law of probability and hurts my brain to think about it but it does."

The sai-wielder pulled himself upright as he glared at all his brothers. "Okay, look, we have about forty seconds before Karai walks in. Do we have an escape plan?"

All eyes turned to Leonardo who was frowning slightly with disapproval at his brother. "You've done this too many times," he decided, "I can't hear anyone coming. Raph, you know your captors' timetable down to the seconds. Doesn't that strike you as a little sad?"

"The plan Leo!" Don said firmly, shooting the door an uncertain glance.

"Well," Leo announced grandly, "The plan is…the plan is…I think we should talk."

"What?" his three brothers demanded.

"With Karai," Leonardo clarified, "We need to explain that Raph has compulsive abductee tendencies and she's an enabler. The only way we can be successful is if we get her and Bishop and every other criminal and mad-scientist in New York in on this thing. Raph- what are you doing?"

The turtle in question had been taking deep breaths. "Change of plan. We're about to be gassed," he said gruffly, "Much to my imminent relief."

Mikey opened his mouth to make a smart mouthed comment then thought better of it. It was around that time the cell flooded with a strange smell from the narrow ceiling vents. The four turtles slipped into a mediative trance to escape the effects of whatever it was they were supposed to be taking in. Unfortunately, that just allowed a Foot ninja to walk in and shoot them with a paralysing agent before they could react.

They were taken out of the cell and carried into a stereotypically white room, filled with many lovely torture instruments. The chair that Raphael was strapped to bore his name on a little gold plaque. It went wonderfully with the blood stains. His brothers all levelled accusing glares at him and he did his best to ignore them.

Karai walked in. "Turtles!" she snarled, "Finally, I shall have my revenge for my father!" she stalked up to Leonardo and glared down at his paralysed body. "My honour will be restored at last, Leonardo! And now, I shall rip your brothers to shreds, bit by bit! Your last moments will be excruciatingly painful! So tell me, who should go first?"

The turtle unfortunately was incapable of speech due to whatever drug he had been shot up with. One of the nearby technicians gave an awkward cough before quickly going round and injecting the turtles with an antidote.

It took several minutes. Kari paced impatiently as she waited for an answer.

"Karai," Leo coughed at last, "We always do this. You threaten me and my brothers, you torture us for a bit, nearly kill us then we pull a daring, last minute escape. Surely you could be doing something more constructive with your life. Don't you long to escape this repetitive cycle of capture and torture?"

Karai narrowed her eyes at her sworn enemy. "Do not be foolish Leonardo!" she hissed, "My vengeance is at hand! I will not desist! And I seem to be incapable of speaking without exclamation marks! You shall pay for this!"

"But Karai, the power to turn your life around is in your hands! Can't you see how destructive this is?"

"The only one this will destroy will be you and yours accursed brethren! I am going to leave you alone now!" Karai informed Leonardo casually. "Take this time to consider your options wisely!"

She swept out of the room. Leonardo exchanged a thoughtful glance with Raphael. It was a deep and meaningful look that conveyed an entire conversation.

_Same plan as usual?_

_Same plan as usual._

Michelangelo saw this look and interpreted it correctly. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me," he protested loudly. "Don, DON! They are doing it again."

Donatello gave his brothers a suspicious look. "Please tell me you aren't thinking about goading Karai into torturing the pair of you and sparing us. It's getting old."

It was like flipping a switch in the two turtles. Righteous anger straightened their backbones and filled them with a desire to be something more than the backdrop to Raphael and Leonardo's drama.

"Not only that," Mikey said indignantly, "It is insulting to us that you think we can't handle it! You guys _always_ do this shtick, oh no, can't let Mickey and Donny get tortured! They're the babies of the family," he rolled his eyes. "You know what! Screw that! I'm invoking my brotherly right to get tortured in the place of you guys. Right now."

"Mikey," Leonardo protested weakly, "You can't-"

"Dude," Mikey said furiously, "It has gotten to the point that Master Splinter thinks that there is something wrong with us!"

"It's true," Donatello added sternly. "It was the most embarrassing moment of my life. Master Splinter sat us down and said, 'My sons, I seem to have gone wrong somewhere with your training. You are…fully capable in the dojo and yet in a real combat situation, you cannot seem to, ah, _perform_.'" He gave his brothers an unamused look. "The sheltering has got to stop. Mikey and I have taken remedial classes on how to handle torture. If you don't let us do this, we may have to kill you when we get free."

Raphael gave them all a desperate look. "The hell you are," he cried out, "What sort of Raphael lets his brothers get tortured when he could be taking it all for them?"

"One that acknowledges that his brothers are autonomous, highly trained ninjas and actually respects them," Donatello retorted flatly. "Oh, and that they are real people, who you know, have their own independent thoughts and desires, chief of which is to be acknowledged as something more than those guys in the background that Leo and Raph must always protect from the cruel, cruel world."

Mikey immediately added,"I, Michelangelo, hereby declare my right to be tortured by a bad guy and then spend several days unconscious while my two brothers Leonardo and Raphael mope around, feeling absolutely useless. Also, I totally want to be able to get into big fights with Donatello over who broke the TV remote and who's fixing it. Then, I'll head topside and be captured and you guys can, like, be totally depressed that I'm not around. And then Don and I get to have depressive thoughts that our last words were about the remote."

"BUT- BUT-THINK OF THE ANGST!" Leonardo protested dramatically. "You are throwing the angst dynamics all out of shape. It just doesn't work like that. Don can't angst over you! The world is not right unless Raphael and I are angsting about each other…or everyone is angsting over Raph."

"THINK OF THE ORIGINALITY!" Michelangelo boomed back at his brother.

It was around this time that Karai decided to return. She was surprised to see that all four terrapins remained strapped to their seats and had not yet escaped. She glanced at her men, who simply shrugged in confusion. This was breaking the script.

"Enough!" She said sharply. "Tell me, who is going first, Leonardo?"

"Oooh, oooh, pick me!" Michelangelo replied quickly before his brothers could get a word in.

Karai blinked. Normally she was receiving threats from them at this point. She glanced at the other turtles.

"Karai! Don't listen to him," Leonardo called out, "I'm the one you have some sort of twisted obsession with. I'll go first."

"Karai! You are fucked up piece of shit!" Raphael.

"Karai, you have either picked Raph or Leonardo the past 154 times. I think a change is in order…" Donatello.

The head of the Foot clan gestured to her chief torturer. "Start with Michelangelo!"

"Noo!" her sworn enemy cried in horror. "Karai, how dare you!"

She smirked at his distress. "You told me I must break this cycle! Is this not a step in the right direction?"

Her technicians began to attach electrodes to Michelangelo's body. Ah, the good old electroshock therapy. The best way to start any torture session. She strode up to the controls to the power supply, relishing the sounds of Leonardo and Raphael's distress, then pushed the on button.

Reality stopped.

Then it reset.

The four turtles were back at home in the lair. Raphael had just pulled on his coat, preparing to go on a newspaper run. Leonardo stood by the door, calling out to his brothers to come join them. Michelangelo was sprawled out on the couch, channel surfing. Donatello was reading a research article about cellular genetics.

Then, the events that had just occurred came rushing back to them.

Michelangelo poked his head above the couch and glared at the ceiling. "Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me," he said with great disgust, "Just when we were making progress!"

From then on, no further attempts were made to change the status-quo.


End file.
